


kiln

by Vintar



Category: Borderlands
Genre: F/F, PWP, worship kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-02
Updated: 2016-11-02
Packaged: 2018-08-28 15:28:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8451757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vintar/pseuds/Vintar
Summary: Maya lets herself slip out of the scene. She knows how the words go, the cadence of worship. Instead of letting it choke her, she aims it at Lilith, and it feels right, it fits, like Lilith is a magnet that pulls everything inside Maya towards her.





	

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt "maya/lilith, worship kink".

Missions are different with different people by your side. With Zer0 stalking the mesas behind her, Maya can throw herself into shootouts with abandon, knowing that better eyes than hers are keeping track of the flow of the battle. When Gaige rides along, Maya finds herself checking for her safety, taking moments in battle to look her over for bullet-holes and burns, making sure Deathtrap is nearby to play the role of giant clanky babysitter. When Axton is around, there's memes. There's _so many memes_.

When Lilith comes along, riding double on a hunt for a rogue cannibal, it's like everything is turned up high. Things are louder, the kills get messier, her blood pumps harder. She's hyperaware of the woman beside her, noting every glimpse in her direction, every look she gets. It feels like the world's most intense job interview. Sweat pricks at Maya's skin where their elbows and knees bump up each other in the narrow front seats of the technical; when they stop touching, Maya's skin burns where Lilith brushed up against her, like she throws off a sun's worth of heat through her skin.

Another difference becomes apparent only when the sun goes down: unlike the rest of the vault hunters, Lilith refuses to sleep in the car. 

"Nope. I've had my share of that." She stretches, grimacing as her back pops. "Only beds from now on. I'm sick of waking up with my face in a cup holder."

"You're going soft," Maya mocks, but she points the car towards the closest blip on the radar anyway.

The nearest equivalent to a town turns out to be a small bunch of rusty tin huts, huddled together in the lee of some giant thing's bones. There's no hotel-- Pandora is still yet to take the tourism world by storm-- but there's an empty room available, with one empty bed. The townspeople shot the previous owner for cheating at cards, they're informed, but not in the room itself, which by Pandoran standards makes it a classy kind of place.

Despite the heat, despite the smell of the stale bedsheets, despite Lilith, lying one bare handspan away from her, Maya gets more sleep than she'd predicted. No-one tries to break in while they're asleep to rob them blind or steal their organs. Definitely a classy kind of place.

In the morning, the reason becomes apparent. Maya opens the door to rustle up some water, and there's an offering of ammo left piled outside their door alongside a sputtering skag-fat candle, burning flare-bright. Lilith laughs before scooping it up.

" _Really?_ Don't encourage them."

"Perks of the powers," Lilith insists, and drops the armful of ammo onto the bed. She shrugs as she picks through the mismatched mess, sorting them by caliber and element. "If they want to appease the gods walking among them then, hey, who am I to judge?" She sniffs a bullet, wrinkles her nose at the tang. "Here, have a slag shot."

Door thoroughly barred again and sealed from prying eyes, Maya drops down beside Lilith, mouth set in a line. The votive candle stinks of some mix of dog and gasoline, and she pinches it out.

"Oh, c'mon. Don't tell me you're not into it." Lilith smirks, then flutters her eyes in the worst impression of wonder that Maya's ever seen. "'Oh mighty siren, praise be upon you for blessing this humble shithole with your presence--"

Maya wants to spit, like she's drank something curdled. "Ugh. Knock it off."

She's ready for more of-- of whatever Lilith is playing at, and she's ready to get up and leave the room, but whatever Lilith sees in her expression is enough to make her stop. "Really? Fine." She flicks a .30 in the air like a coin toss, catches it.

Awkward with embarrassment, Maya picks half-heartedly through their offering. "You like that kind of stuff? Like, honestly?"

"Who doesn't?" She leans back, still pliable from sleep, bare feet flexing on the scratchy blankets. She looks like anyone would ten minutes after waking up, red hair still mussed, but her eyes are sharp as they look at Maya. "I guess... you, huh?"

"Bad memories," Maya mutters. She braces herself for prying questions, but that's the great thing about Lilith. She either doesn't care, or she doesn't need to ask.

"More for me, then."

"Ha! Sure, works for me. I'll aim every wannabe cultist fruit-loop your way."

"Sounds like a deal to me. I'll take 'em off your hands any day."

It's definitely different to being out with the other vault hunters. The skerricks of Maya's dark mood evaporate for the moment, and she finds herself miming turning people around and shoving them towards Lilith. "'Oh beautiful goddess'? Nope, please head over that way..."

"Mine now."

"Your presence is a blessing!' Off you go."

"Mmm, yes," Lilith purrs in pretend indulgence. "Keep 'em coming."

"'Phaselock my ass'?"

Lilith snorts with surprised laughter. It's a charmingly ugly noise. "Okay, I'm just going to set that guy on fire."

"'In death I become an offering! Praise the Firehawk's mighty judgement!'" Maya squeaks in a mocking impression, and Lilith doubles over with laughter.

This is something... new. Every word she's mocked has been aimed at Maya, piled on top of her for years until she felt like she was suffocating under them. But facing Lilith, drinking in the other woman's confidence, Maya lets herself slip out of the scene. She knows how the words go, the cadence of worship. Instead of letting it choke her, she aims it at Lilith, and it feels right, it _fits_ , like Lilith is a magnet that pulls everything inside Maya towards her. 

She needs to clear her head. She needs to get some space.

She doesn't want to.

With a lurch, she sees that Lilith knows it.

"You're good at that," Lilith says, one foot away from Maya on the bed, the sheets still warm from where they slept. She squints a little, eyes calculating.

It's been a while since-- everything. Roland's been gone. Lilith's been back at her post, but when she spends the evening drinking at Moxxi's, it's alone. For a few weeks, some extremely optimistic Sanctuary citizens had decided to try their luck. Maya knows this because Zed isn't exactly discreet when it comes to showing off "really cool burns, have a look at this one, don't it just look like the splitting image of a skag riding a bicycle?".

Lilith is Off Limits. Everyone knows this. Maya definitely does, because she's thought about it a _lot_ , from the instant that Lilith appeared in front of her in Frostburn, full of cockiness and power and a smirk that left Maya struck dumb as a post. 

There's no way that Lilith could feel even a little bit about her the way that she does about Lilith. She's told herself that enough times. But what she sees in the amused twist of Lilith's mouth is telling her otherwise. That's... okay. That's something.

Very carefully, very precisely, Maya touches Lilith's ankle.

Maya never let anyone touch her. Even in the depths of her worship, crushed by expectation and their greedy need for a god, she never let that boundary get crossed. She could see it in their eyes, though, always desperate for blessing by touch-- the urge to brush their fingers to the hem of her robes, to touch her feet as she walked, to catch a strand of her hair from her head.

She brushes the pads of her fingers over the curve of Lilith's ankle. That magnet tug pulls her forward, like she's humming with it.

This is weird. She knows this is weird. She's weird.

Lilith cocks her head to the side. "Did I say you could stop talking?"

A shiver races through Maya, hard. She leans forward, the shift in weight dipping the thin mattress, sending the bullets pooling around her knees.

"You're... divine?"

"Are you asking, or are you telling?"

Maya bites the inside of her lip, and breathes until her voice comes steady. "Your presence is a blessing."

"You said that one already," Lilith says, and if Maya had any doubts about Lilith being as into this as she is, they vanish as Lilith tosses her hair impatiently, her eyes fixed on Maya. Her heart beats hard enough that for one moment she's sure that the other residents of the rickety little compound must be able to hear it thumping.

"Your power holds me in awe," she says, running on Order autopilot, and then some pressure inside of her breaks its bonds. "You're incredible. It's like you were born for this, like-- without the powers, I could have been some nobody, I _would_ have been some nobody, but you were made for this! There's no way that you'd ever have been normal, even without the powers. You would have always been something bright and burning." She swallows, her throat catching. "You're incredible."

She has to stop to catch her breath, inhaling until it feels like there's no space left for the thunderstorm inside her ribcage, and Lilith, beautiful, awful Lilith, looks at her with those sharp predator eyes, and says: "Anything else?"

Maya drops her head into her hands and fights a dizzy smile. "Your faithful servant is in awe of your incredible modesty and humility."

"Pfft." Lilith jams her foot against Maya's face, shoving her in reprimand, and then rests it on her shoulder, and from there it's easy enough for Maya to slide forward, the weight of Lilith's foot being replaced by the hard ball of her calf muscle, and then the dip of her knee, and then the weight of her thigh...

In the months following her escape from the cult, Maya had thrown herself into decadence, an act of rebellious freedom she'd ultimately prove too earnest for in the end. The act itself wasn't new, but being stared down by Lilith's half-hooded yellow eyes was a world away from going down on the women whose names she'd swear to remember but always forget, their fingers probing curiously at her markings as she held their hips in place.

Refreshingly, Lilith doesn't touch Maya's tattoos. It's like she doesn't have them at all. Ignored, relieved, Maya focuses on the sight of Lilith's instead. When she drags the flat of her tongue along Lilith's clit, they pulse. No-one's watching her, expectant and waiting for her to do some trick, like a trained dog; for once, she feels invisible. It's heady. She throws herself into the feeling, pressing forward until she's just a mouth, just fingers, something for Lilith to use. Barely touching Lilith at all, she lets Lilith rock up against her tongue, urging Maya on faster, harder.

"Good," Lilith purrs, and even as her fingers knot painfully in Maya's hair as she comes, Maya holds still, lets the sting wash through her.

When Maya pulls away to breathe, the air is shockingly cool on her mouth. She's wetter than she's ever been, heartbeat pulsing in her cunt, aching on the verge of spilling over. She looks up to Lilith from between her lazily spread knees, about to ask for the indulgent touch of a goddess--

"Welp," Lilith says, and rolls off the bed.

Maya stares at the empty dent in the mattress, struck dumb. Before her astonishment can turn into anything worse, Lilith smacks her on the ass. "Alright, up and at 'em. We've got a cannibal to catch."

"You-- _really?!_ " is all she can manage, frozen in place by offense and a so-close orgasm, just tantalizingly out of reach. Her voice squeaks unbecomingly. Her lips are still slick. Something heated flushes through her, and she can feel her cheeks redden. "Some loving god you are," she says, but she's already turning to pull her boots on.

Lilith stretches, laughing, and reaches for her weapons. "Hey, the whole god thing revolves around not giving people what they want." She pauses for a moment, shotgun in hand, and looks Maya up and down, slow and sure. Her smirk is smug, but her eyes are warm, and there's a promise there. "At least, before they truly prove their dedication."

"By killing cannibals?"

"Maybe." Lilith raises an eyebrow. "Why don't you find out?" 

Maya doesn't know if this thing is going to be a proper thing, but Maya knows this: that cannibal is going to be _so_ dead _so_ fast, and then she's going to slam the technical into gear and chew up the highway all the way back to Sanctuary, and then she's going to hit up Moxxi for the best sheets and the fanciest candles she can manage, and then she's going to find out exactly how many hymns of worship she remembers.

As they're headed out the door a few minutes later, Maya catches Lilith muttering "Definitely better than sleeping in the car," and she laughs.


End file.
